Hazard (23 page)

An everything room. She called it that rather than the renting term “single.” One space with a section near the entrance that was supposed to be a dining area. Every time she moved she vowed the next place would have a bedroom but she always eventually settled for another similar everything room. Always only partially furnished because she too quickly lost interest in it.

She lay nude and uncovered, with a leg up on the back of the convertible sofa, an immodest alone position, and her thoughts went to him flying away at thirty-five thousand feet. He was way up and she was down. The ice cream had a refrigerator taste but it was better than nothing. He was just away on an ordinary trip he would surely return from, she pretended, thinking positive. She couldn't keep her thoughts from turning over to the negative side. The spoon was too short for the quart container and the ice cream was frozen hard but she dug in, scraping, not wanting to wait until it softened. He was flying away at hundreds of miles per hour. Why is it, she thought, men are always hurrying away and women always waiting? There was no consolation in his reason for going. Actually, his reason was selfishly masculine, indulgent, careless, and … admirable. However, he could have stayed to fight insomnia and watch old movies and been safe with her.

Cope, detach, she advised herself. And, trying, she reviewed some of the rules she'd set for survival: Win without sympathy for the loser, never accept defeat, and never even consider surrendering. Abandon, amputate without a wince, hurt instead of be hurt no matter how much it hurt. Avoid the pitfall of the old romantic promises. Don't let your body trap you!

New by-laws of her gender.

Keven wondered if any woman could really live up to them. She knew deep down that she couldn't. As much as she wanted to prevent being victimized, from being unfairly forced into the old abject female role, she had to admit to a natural side of her that found virtues in those very things she resisted. Sometimes, especially lately, she thought it would be marvelous to have the courage to surrender, the confidence to just give in. Maybe she'd already had too much independence, been on her own too long. Somewhere along the line she'd come to realize there was a rock-bottom fact of life that one had to get down to sooner or later.

Aloneness.

Not to be confused with loneliness. There were many clever cures for loneliness, but aloneness was something no one could overcome. Everyone wanted to join and share, share experiences. Trying to do that, trying vainly to make up for not being able to do that, left one feeling so futile. And certainly independence didn't help. If anything, independence left one facing aloneness alone, and who could handle that without crashing?

Maybe, thought Keven, aloneness was not without purpose. Maybe things were intentionally arranged that way to get people to depend on each other all the more, to take comfort from one another. To love. Of all the alternatives it seemed to her that love was the only possible way to offset aloneness. Not a remedy but at least it helped.

If at that moment he'd been there she would have insisted on doing his feet.

She finished the ice cream and turned on her portable television, just picture, no sound. Burt Lancaster was being an incredible pirate. She'd seen that movie three, probably four times. Nevertheless she watched intently as Burt invited danger and miraculously escaped death with chest and teeth bared.

Haz could do it, Keven thought with recharged optimism. He could come back all right.

After the movie she decided against converting the sofa into a bed because a bed would be lonelier. From the bottom drawer of an unpainted chest she got a crocheted wool afghan to cover herself. She was chilled, possibly from the ice cream. The afghan smelled of moth repellent. It had been a gift three Christmases ago from the mother, who claimed months of loving labor spent on it. But the mother had overlooked a little manufacturer's label sewn to one corner that gave away her lie. The mother was always incriminating herself ridiculously like that, often in ways most people would consider unforgivable. Keven had long given up blaming her or hoping she'd change.

Numerous times over the years the mother had voluntarily revealed to Keven who the father was. As though it were an important secret. But each time she'd named someone different and, anyway, to Keven they were only names. Keven was convinced the mother didn't know, hadn't ever really known the father. An impulsive, passionate moment between two first-name-only strangers who immediately afterward had gone separate ways. Keven imagined that was the truth of it. And she was the result, thank you very much. She wasn't bitter about it. Her compensating philosophy was that being “a child of passion” was something most people couldn't claim. It even sounded more sensitive.

She tucked the afghan around her and lay on her side, legs drawn up, hands pressed between her thighs. She closed her eyes but didn't go to sleep until in her mind she was sure his plane had landed at Heathrow.

She slept exceptionally deeply, longer than usual, and was proud of that. See, she told herself as she drew open the drapes to view an upright rectangle of clear sky between two buildings, see how well you can cope when you have to.

In that mood she spent what remained of the morning cleaning the apartment, and while she straightened, vacuumed and dusted, her mind kept repeating parts of a Liza Minnelli song:

It was a good time,

It was the best time …

Every so often it came out as a hum or she'd sing the first line, not really conscious of how appropriate the words might be, their past tense.

It was a good time.

In the early afternoon she went out to mail the money to the mother and take a walk anywhere. Down Lexington, window-shopping along, feeling the urge to buy but saving it. All the way to Bloomingdale's, where she went to a crowded first-floor counter and spent nearly an hour trying on inexpensive summer hats. Various shapes and colors: precocious, head-hugging pink; icy, innocent white; floppy, worldly black. Her face in the mirror responded accordingly. She hardly saw the hats. Look at me looking at me, I'm not apparently unhappy, she thought, and after a final long, contemplative gaze into her own eyes she smiled her best soft, comforting smile to herself, causing two comma-shaped lines to appear at the corners of her mouth.

From the hats she took the escalator up and happened to notice that the bosoms of display dummies were now realistically punctuated. About time. On the fourth floor she watched a man cutting wine bottles into drinking glasses, making it appear easy, and another demonstrating a motorized tumbling rock polisher. She was immediately sold on the polisher. It would be fun to find pretty pebbles and make them shine even prettier. She remembered she already had a few she'd picked up to never forget some of the places she'd been. Charge or cash, she was asked. She paid by check. Sensibly she'd canceled all her charge accounts when she'd quit her last steady job. Take or send? The rock polisher was compact but quite heavy. However, she didn't hesitate to say she'd take. The burden was more endurable than having to wait for something she'd already bought. The salesclerk tied a handle on it for her.

She left Bloomingdale's via one of the Third Avenue exits and strolled down to 58th Street. There was a famous personal landmark. The Off-Track Betting parlor where she and Hazard first met. On impulse she went in to pay sentimental tribute. She wagered ten dollars on the sixth race Exacta at Aqueduct, coupling the horses' designated letters H and K. They were both outside long shots running in a large field but, she thought, anything was possible. She tucked the OTB ticket into the snug rear pocket of her jeans, for luck.

Then back up Third. The 59th Street area was crowded, mostly with people not going anywhere. When she'd first come to the city four years before, the district around 59th had been smartly unconventional, a cleaner uptown version of downtown. But it had seen its day and was now well on its way to sleazy, spoiled dirty by being the place to go, meet, and be seen, by the invasion of too much pizza, tacky boutiques, cheap shoe stores, and even porno film theaters. East 60th was better preserved and Keven headed for it and Serendipity, where she knew she'd be able to get cold fresh-squeezed carrot juice and an organic sandwich.

She was almost there when she was approached head on, her way blocked by two conscientiously tailored Negroes. Their eyes held directly on Keven's as they told her she was a
foxy lady
and advised that she should go with them because she would dig it, coke and all.

She stepped back to go around them, but they casually prevented that. She was considering a groin kick when they gave way to let her pass, their fingers snapping at the wide brims of their hats:
dig it, baby, it's your loss.

Keven knew what they were. A pair of dudes out looking to recruit another girl to their working string. It made her remember being financially desperate in California at eighteen and someone trying to persuade her to go topless for big tips. Instead, she'd taken a job as a receptionist and gone to
UCLA
nights. There'd been many such decisive things, but fortunately she'd always chosen the straight, if not the expedient, way to go. She was grateful for her good judgment. She believed she must have gotten it from the father. Anyway, now she was past the danger point, a survivor.

However, the encounter with the two dudes had depressed her, put a chink in her fragile good mood. The whole damned city was a mess, one endless gutter, a summer festival of dog droppings, a combat zone for the greedy insane.

She hurried to Second Avenue, took a cab to Grand Central, and just made the 4:05 Bridgeport express.

When she arrived at the installation Kersh was finishing up for the day. He was, as usual, pleased to see her. She tried to appear buoyant and animated, but Kersh saw through that. He called Julie to tell her Keven would be having dinner with them and staying the night. It was not an offhand, easy gesture, because ordinarily Kersh and Julie enjoyed being alone, spending time on one another as though it were their own precious, personal currency. Respecting that, Keven resisted the hospitality but Kersh wouldn't have it.

He gave her a bright red crash helmet, put on a white one himself, and within minutes they were speeding over the narrow black ribbons of sideroads on the Harley-Davidson with Kersh's hairy sheepdog Baldy chasing after them. The growl and vibrations of the old heavy motorcycle made it seem to be going faster than it really was. Keven couldn't help being a bit apprehensive. She leaned forward against Kersh's broad back, put her arms around him and locked her hands. Then she felt more secure, protected by his husky solidness. When they paused at a crossroad, Keven glanced back but Baldy wasn't in sight. “What about him?” she asked, having to shout.

“He knows the way,” Kersh assured her, and roared ahead. But at the next crossroad Kersh idled until they saw the dog come over the rise some distance behind, a fluffy gray ball rolling their way. Kersh encouraged the dog with a wave and continued on. After a short way they turned off onto a dirt road and were there.

It was a three-story, wood-frame farmhouse set on enough land for privacy. Painted clean white with shutters of blue. It had a wide porch all around and there were large, old, friendly trees and lilac bushes. Set off to the right was a barn, settled askew and nicely weathered.

Julie came out to greet them. She gave Kersh a kiss on the mouth and then hugged Keven, though it was a bit awkward because she was so pregnant. Seven and a half months now, causing her long cotton skirt to hike up unevenly in front and her blouse to strain and gap from the fullness of her breasts. She was obviously very happy with her condition, glowing with a kind of self-amazement.

Baldy came lumbering in, panting, his pink tongue hanging, exhausted but needing to wag and bound around. Kersh gave a few rewarding pats and led the dog into the house for water.

“Come help me pick some lettuce for the salad,” Julie invited and Keven went with her to the rear of the house, where there was a vegetable garden neatly rowed and fenced.

It was one of Keven's someday wishes to have a garden like that, growing fresh things she knew for certain were uncontaminated. She took the small fruit basket Julie handed her and went down between rows, eager to pick.

“It's early lettuce,” Julie said. “This will be the first we've had.”

That made Keven feel that her presence was an occasion. She bent over and broke off some of the outer greener leaves of a plant, liking the crisp, healthy snap her fingers experienced. Glancing down the row she saw Julie squatted gracelessly, her reach and mobility restricted by her unborn burden. It occurred to Keven that perhaps pregnancy overcame aloneness. At least during pregnancy one was connected to another person. That could be the joy of it, a temporary relief from aloneness. Reason enough for any woman to feel special.

The thought was interrupted by the clatter of a dull bell. Across the way in a small pasture two cows were munching and swishing. “You even have your own milk.”

“Not quite yet,” Julie said lightly, and then realized Keven meant the cows. “Oh, them. They're both old and dry.”

“They're just for atmosphere?”

“Well, they also make valuable contributions to the garden.”

“They don't look very friendly.”

“They'd come in the house if we'd let them.”

Keven thought she'd get acquainted with those cows if she had the chance.

At that moment Julie lost her balance. From her squatting position she toppled over backwards. Keven rushed to her, but Julie was laughing. “It happens all the time,” she said. “I'm always overcompensating for being front heavy.”

Keven helped her up. Julie slapped the dirt from her skirt as though annoyed at herself and immediately squatted to start picking again.

They had dinner out on the side porch. While they ate dusk gave way to dark and with it came the pleasant sounds of all the little night-loving creatures. Moths performed around the kerosene lamp on the table. The conversation went from one trivial subject to another.